i7 3820 available for pre-order

Currently Sandy Bridge-E is limited to just two high end and very expensive processors, the i7 3960X (£860/$1050 ) and the i7 3930K (£490/$600 ). Now Intel is readying a third processor that won’t break the bank as much. The i7 3820 which is a quad core piece with 10MB of L3 cache, 8 threads, quad channel memory support, 3.6/3.9GHz speeds and an 130W TDP. It will be the new cheapest model in the Sandy Bridge-E family coming in at £235/€276/$311 making it almost half the cost of the i7 3930K with just two less cores.

Overclocking is limited as it is not a K processor. Early reports suggest the multiplier is capped at 43 but the bus speeds are significantly alterable so you can still get the processor to around 4.6GHz, see here for more overclocking information.

The i7 3820 can be found in Europe here and in America here. However, there is currently no stock until Intel delivers the first shipments which could take another couple of weeks.